867 free-to-read stories tagged “Identity”
"Where Oaken Hearts Do Gather” (Roud 423, Child 313) is a traditional English folk ballad. Like many traditional songs, the lyrics are unattributed. Child transcribed twenty verses, and a twenty-first got added later (and is included here for some unknown...
deathviolence
In which we learn about the donors of each of the nine teeth and what effects they had on Washington.
abuseanimal-harmdeathracismsexual-violenceslaverysuicideviolence
Tabitha has been walking a long time, trying to wear out seven pairs of iron shoes; Amira has been sitting alone on a glass hill that suitors try to climb.
abuseviolence
"It is 2091, and Grace is staring at the rabbit in the corner of her visual overlay. It is an Angora rabbit, fluffy and white, and when Grace picked the icon out, she did not realize how much she would come to dread the sight of it. She moves, and the...
abusedeathmental-illnesspregnancy-losssexual-violencesuicide
The inventor of trans-multiverse travel invites hundreds of instances of herself to a conference. It’s great fun until one gets murdered.
deathviolence
Sam’s ability is modest, but he’s still excited to be accepted into the Super Team. Now he just has to figure out how he can make the biggest difference—assuming he can do more good than harm.
violence
Following a disaster in Antarctica, MacReady spends summer 1983 in New York and starts to wonder what he might have brought back with him.
body-horrordeathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-useviolence
"This is our story, simplified: Life. Loss. Transformation. Love. Death. Iteration. The first time you get our message, you only / find one thread. It mimics your language in / its simplest form, a single strand of words / laid end to end. You will have to...
death
"Paulie rushes out the elevator doors the moment they part, only to skid to a halt at the sight of his father’s wife. She shakes her head, but he doesn’t need the confirmation. If Tricia is out here and not in the hospital room with his father, it can only...
death-of-a-loved-one
Computron was the only intelligent robot built in the 1950s. Now all he does is answer questions from children and write fan-fiction about the robot in the Hyperdimension Warp Record TV show.
Rhye a bitter ex-supersoldier, fights to rescue Rack, her hacker partner in crime, after the criminals they're working for kill Rack's body while his mind is in cyberspace.
body-horrordeathgoreviolence
The ship hadn’t activated Bot 9 in a long time—it’s an unstable model—but in a desperate situation it needs all its resources. And how much trouble can it get into hunting down a rat?
deathviolence
Months after mysterious aliens scattered their spacecraft across North America, no one has a clue what they want. Avery knows what one of them wants, though: it wants a tour.
animal-harmdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"I have been activated, therefore I have a purpose, Bot 9 thought. I have a purpose, therefore I serve. It recited the Mantra Upon Waking, to check that it was running at optimum physical efficiency, then the Mantra of Obedience, the Mantra of Not...
deathviolence
Entertaining tale of a modern search engine that achieves real artificial intelligence by accident and decides it wants to be helpful to people.
mental-illnesssubstance-use
"My dear Cara, Thank you for sending me the photos, I never thought I’d feel this way again. But the pictures help. They really do. I can’t stop looking at them. Thank you for scanning and emailing them to me. These photos and our old videos are all I’ve...
"I will always remember the view of Paris from his window. Snow, pure and untouched, softens the outline of the buildings and covers the grime of the streets. White, the color of beginnings. His canvas is primed and ready to be painted, and stark winter...
death-of-a-loved-onewar
"The first Martian War was won not by man, but microbes. The second we fought with Martian weapons that nearly broke the world. The third invasion we stopped by our own hands, using magic.” —Wei-Yin Sun, Imperial Historian in the Court of the Empress...
deathwar
AirBody is like AirB&B except you rent out your body, not your home. Arsalan doesn’t expect any trouble from a middle-aged Pakistani woman, but everything she does reminds him of lost opportunities in his own past.
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
Lady Ida's visit to Venus was memorialized by the beautiful floral papercuts she made there, but this sensational story reveals the secret of the real purpose of her visit.
deathsubstance-useviolencewar
Lao Dao processes trash in a fantastic future "third-space" Beijing. To get money for his daughter's education, he makes a dangerous trip to first-space--a city that unfolds when his own Beijing sleeps.
In this provocative and rich retelling of the Greek myth, Orpheus, the musician son of Apollo and Calliope, successfully rescues his wife Eurydice from Hades after her untimely death.
body-horrordeath
Until a visiting starship arrived, the other mermaids thought Essarala was silly for wanting to explore the galaxy.
death
Zanna settles into a remote mountain cabin to write her next book. No internet. No phone. No distractions.
body-horrordeath
The crew of the new Mars mission are coming to the hotel where Emily works, and her mom is starting to say strange things about her involvement with the last Mars mission.
deathillness-and-pandemic
"That first video of the flying man goes viral on social media and gets featured on the news. No jet pack. No hang glider. Just him, unaided, soaring over the cable-stayed bridge that leads into the city. The video looks like it was shot on a cellphone...
racismviolence
Alyssa seeks out the aliens who can give her an augment that will let her exchange thoughts and feelings with other humans. But why does she want it, and what is the cost?
body-horrordeath
In which we learn how the new court magician was recruited and find out how even a “market rat” can qualify. We learn that there is real magic, but it comes with a price.
body-horrordeathviolence
The girl he killed was much more than merely human, and there will be consequences.
deathmisogynysexual-violenceviolence
A young hustler discovers that he's supposed to play a big role in transforming New York from a city to a City. If he can survive it.
deathracismviolence
Teenage Tetley lives in a human settlement (one of the last) built on a miles-wide floating garbage dump. She explains why everyone hates her now.
deathsexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
Anat doesn't remember her parents, but she loves her brother Oscar. They live in a wonderful world full of strange creatures and machines. The more she learns, the stranger things seem.
deathviolence
Salman pursues the truth behind stories his grandfather told him about an impoverished princess he used to know back in Pakistan and the Jinn that protected her.
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
The vampires aren’t even the worst part about being a teenage trans girl on tumblr.
abusechild-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onegoremisogynysexual-violencesubstance-usetransphobiaviolence
While learning the ropes from a crafty Jazz Age bank robber, a young stowaway discovers their authentic self, a hidden gift, and that there are no straight lines when you run the fox roads…
deathracismviolence
"A week before the Season began, as Mrs. Vanessa Saunders held brunch court at the Empire Hotel, a photo appeared on her phone: a large oak door beneath a pale green sign with silver lettering. Impossible, she thought, flipping the infernal device over...
death
Alzheimer's patient's family can't visit her very often, so they buy a robot to fool her into thinking they're visiting her. The robot tells the story.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"A ship glides through the night, behemoth mother, swollen with ten thousand human lives. Her path is a single shining vector. There has been no stopping, no rest for the decades she has traveled, and there will be nothing but void for the two years to...
child-deathpregnancy-lossviolence
An android who knows nothing besides his work in a factory, is given one final week to explore the world before he is forced to undergo mandatory reprogramming, in this bittersweet precursor to TJ Klune’s In the Lives of Puppets.
body-horrordeath
"At first I thought something had broken in my book. I didn’t notice until the afternoon light from the windows began to recede. I tried to increase the brightness settings of the page, but no matter how I thumbed the margins, they would not change. For...
death-of-a-loved-onesubstance-useviolence
"The tenth time Jakey broke the rules, he put a sandwich in the mailbox where the window boy could get it. Mom had taken her sleep-quick pills and gone to bed after dinner, on account of her headaches. And Dad was dozing in front of the TV, chin on his...
abusebody-horrorchild-abusedeathviolence
"Old as she was, the Kiskadee had done three full delivery runs without a single safety incident. So naturally, with the crew relaxed after a fourth successful delivery and launch, and eight cycles after Reece slingshotted the starship around Tavaco to...
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"WHEEP-3 (“Dr. Weep”), probably the most renowned AI AI-critic of the last two decades, was retired by the Shallow Laboratory at Stanford University last Wednesday. Created by Dr. Jody Reynolds Tran more than two decades ago, the experimental generative...
death
An enhanced chimp and her human partner investigate an apparently pointless murder committed by a woman who was under remote control from an unknown source.
abusebody-horrordeathsuicideviolence
Fourteen-year-old Ghost gave up on finding a foster family a long time ago. She’s just waiting until she turns 18 and can leave “the Agency.” Then a new girl turns up—one who can actually remember her life before she was sent there.
abusebody-horrorchild-abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
A key scientist in the Dai Viet interstellar empire has died, and three people who were close to her mourn her passing in different ways.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"1926 Washington, D.C. Shaw District “There’s a man on the front stoop.” The words spilled from her in a much more mundane way than Judy had expected, considering how her neck was fluttering with her excited pulse. Alvin looked up from the new Langston...
abusedeathviolence
"Doc, there’s a ... hole growing in me,” the alien said through the spherical interpreting machine hovering over them. Semau barely registered the word “hole,” so taken was she by the sight of the alien. If she were just a tad less caring about propriety,...
deathviolence
"Bloodsoaked and grinning, the Soldier climbs to the summit of the ruins. The wind is mountain-top fast. It grabs the strands of her hair that have escaped her ponytail and sticks them to her ecstatic mouth: the slick surface of teeth, the gloss-wet of...
violence
"It was half past midnight when Olga heard the Devil cry. They were supposed to be wild tonight, the three of them. Cassandra had led the way and Maria and Olga didn’t put up much of a fight. They would visit the Devil’s bridge—anything that claimed to be...
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Long ago, Sylvie turned herself into a tree to avoid rape, but she wonders if there might not be a better way.
sexual-violencesuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
abusebody-horrordeathgoreracismsexual-violenceviolence
Lola (aka Eliza) has had problems dealing with people ever since she was a child, but she's always been good with snakes.
abusechild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
"For the whole of the year that I now look back on as the best of my life, Susanna Miller’s act began twenty-three minutes after mine ended. I went first, to warm up the crowd, followed by the dog trainer, the hypnotist, Susanna, the twin acrobats, the...
mental-illnessmisogyny
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrordeathsexual-contentsubstance-use
When an illicit trade deal goes wrong and Quandary is blamed for it, she goes on the run to avoid the crosshairs of a bioengineered killer that only lives for 24 hours. If Q can evade it for that long, she just might survive.
deathsubstance-useviolence
"My parents taught me to lie as soon as I could speak. Before I knew the meaning of the words, before I understood heat or fire, and long before I felt the pain of singed flesh, I learned to tell strangers that I burned myself by grasping a hot iron pot."
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
As the Cold War stalls and the threat of nuclear warfare dominates the news, small-town misfits Laurie and Fell bond over a shared love of music and the mystery of the erratic radio messages that hint at the existence of a future worth reaching out for.
In this spell-binding tale, a Pakistani storyteller captivates a group of wide-eyed tourists with a nesting doll of interlocked stories about a trickster and a hidden city ruled by the Queen of Red Midnight.
abusebody-horrorchild-deathviolence
In 1888 a woman suffering a hideous deformity was murdered in London. Today, her descendent wants to find the culprit.
deathviolence
Adam has 70% of the memories of the man who created him, but something vital is hiding in that missing 30%.
death-of-a-loved-one
The crew of the Themis colony write home about their struggles with a mission and a world that seems to be more than a little off.
mental-illnesssubstance-use
Baekdo, a fox who wants to become human, needs one more kill to achieve his goal. A collapsing city in the middle of a civil war seems like a good place to do it but there are complications.
deathviolencewar
Madeline is having an adverse reaction to an experimental drug--she revisits episodes in her past.
"When Mark told you he was marrying your clone, you said “congratulations” on autopilot, because that’s what you say when your friend tells you they’re getting married, and you had promised to stay friendly after the divorce. You studied his face, his...
child-abuse
"Atop a ladder was Naeto, reaching for the lights. The lights flickered as his touch neared. Down below, Gozi held the ladder, rooting it to the ground. A small breeze came, and the ladder tilted, and the ladder swayed, but Naeto did not waver. Gozi was...
"When her bell sounded at midnight, Firion the wizard grasped her stoutest staff (crowned, for non-magical reasons, with a razor-sharp chunk of amethyst) and put her lips to the doorjamb. “Who goes there?” Nothing but the slap of rain against stone, like...
When Hurston Hill is threatened by a suspiciously powerful urban development firm, Miss l’Abielle steps up to protect her community with the help of a mysterious orphaned girl in this charming follow-up to “St. Valentine, St. Abigail, St. Brigid”.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
racism
The narrator and a friend plot to steal a valuable artwork from an underworld boss who’s pissed them off.
body-horrorviolence
An immigrant is distressed because her mother’s ghost is confiscated at the border.
death-of-a-loved-one
June’s sister Wanda suffered some kind of brain damage in an experiment aimed at learning the nature of reality. Two other people died in that experiment, and June would like some answers.
death
An orphan recruit on a Turkish airship tends the brainwashed monkeys that constitute one of their principle weapons. He fears them deeply, but the ones with mechanical parts he fears the worst.
deathgoreviolencewar
A Chinese woman living in the Bay Area needs to raise money to get her daughter into Stanford. She tries to sell her English-language proficiency, but even after fifteen years, it’s not good enough. But her native fluency in Mandarin is worth a lot, if...
Mallory Iheji would do anything to watch her favorite artist’s lost movie, “The Hydraulic Emperor.” But what would she really sacrifice for it?
‘Nisha only has five hours to get across New York to her dead aunt’s apartment before the city comes to throw away all her stuff. She’s not even sure it’s worth it, but they said her aunt was a witch…
deathgoreviolence
Fun adventure on Old Venus. Dharthi risks her life in an unexplored part of Ishtar Terra looking for evidence of a vanished civilization that would save her career.
violence
Surreal tale about the loves and losses of Violet Wild, a girl from the purple country, who crosses the spectrum accompanied by a unicorn, a sorrow, and a herd of time squirrels.
deathviolence
"When I met the young Mr. Turing, I had not yet ascended as Autumn’s King. Nowadays it has become fashionable for the sons and daughters of the lesser fey gentry to improve their position in the shifting hierarchy of the Courts by virtue of intrigue,...
deathsexual-contentsexual-violence
"The form is one page long. No back. Just a front. It should be longer. There are six copies of the form, all different colors. Like I’m working my way through the rainbow to the end where I’ll finally find peace. Red. A parent or guardian. I meet my...
abuseillness-and-pandemictransphobia
"There is no limit to the number of curses in the world. For each one the monks try to exorcise, ten more take its place. We are not here because we enjoy it though. Please don’t misunderstand. As you dip into steaming bath waters, entwine your bodies...
cannibalismsexual-violencesuicideviolence
"Cool and Sexy Asian Girl stands outside the convenience store under the striped awning and waits for the rain to stop. The rain is never going to stop. Cool and Sexy Asian Girl would need to go to a different city for the rain to stop, a city not built on...
"The causes of the disaster are these: First: The estimations of this planet’s temperature were incorrect. The beacon should never have been placed. This planet is no more capable of supporting human life than our own polar wastelands. Second: My...
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathmental-illnesssexual-violencesubstance-useviolence
Stick was made to pilot Phoenix in the war against the apostates. Stick never feels entirely human, but the final battle approaches, and Stick looks forward to it.
abusedeathviolencewar
A day laborer hired to clean up a flooded creek outside of Boulder, Colorado uncovers what could be a valuable find—if it doesn't kill him first.
deathgoreviolence
Saga does maintenance work on an old, living starship. Skidbladnir is doing poorly lately, and Saga’s boss is determined to save her, even if no one else wants to.
When you were eight, the haunted house changed your life. Twenty years later, you’re determined to study it, but it’s determined to change your life again.
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
As Lily dies from tuberculosis, she relives fantasies from “Through the Looking Glass,” by Lewis Carroll
child-abusedeathillness-and-pandemic
Jamie’s a non-binary teenager in a small town, but they remember at least a dozen past lives, one of which relates to a forty-year-old murder.
violence
Corinna was eleven when her magical journey to the Land of Nibiru ended with her returning to her kitchen at home. Now she’s waiting for her friends to return for her. Probably.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorchild-abusedeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
In 2001, just before the attacks, a girl out West has a very close encounter with space aliens.
body-horrordeathgoresexual-violenceviolence
"A dual-carriage road descends from a flyover bridge in Thamesmead, bearing sluggish traffic on both sides. From inside bus number 229, a woman looks out of the large windows and thinks the other vehicles look like toy cars. For all she knows, the 229...
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-onemental-illnessviolence
In one small town, the delicate balance between predator and prey is threatened when five girls are murdered on prom night.
body-horrordeathviolence
Evan is suddenly coughing up bones, like, A LOT of bones, but that’s not even in the top ten strangest things that have happened to him since he moved into his new (possibly haunted) duplex...
"Andrew was convinced the writer had been trans. By this point his friends were tired of hearing about it, but he had no one else to tell besides the internet, and he was too smart for that. That would be asking for it. Samantha Finnes was a minor...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
abusedeathgoreviolence
"Brother-Adita paused at the top of the ridge and rotated one eye to take in the shells climbing the path behind them. They gestured beyond them with a limb, a habit picked up from their young, excitable sibling. “Quarter-march, west-north-west,” came...
deathslaveryviolence
Approaching 50, Mabel decides to become a glass bottle dancer. She tries to hide it from her family, but the local cockroaches notice it for sure when she gathers up their bottles, and they’ve got dreams too.
"He spoke once, the words whispered by frozen lips on a face so frostbitten he looked like a porcelain doll. I found him below the summit as our expedition bottlenecked before the Hillary Step on our final ascent of Mount Everest. And above the bottleneck,...
body-horrordeath
She wants to get out of Hell, but all the boys she has in mind keep letting her down.
Samantha searches Paris to try to find what’s killing fallen angels.
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-onegoreviolence
When other girls catch fairies, they wish for beauty, but Amelia just wants to do well on her science project.
Donny is a young teen in high school, but his augments give him an intimate connection to the Internet—and put him at odds with his teachers and other students.
Ben’s parents send him to a special camp for gifted students, but the camp rules are very strange and one of his classmates is so weird he wonders if she’s from another planet.
deathviolence
Rhehan used to be a Kel supersoldier before being kicked out. Now the Kel needs Rhehan for a dangerous mission—offering the only coin Rhehan might consider.
violence
People who don’t like living underground in the colony can live inside giant “whales” that float high in the planet’s atmosphere. That’s usually pretty safe.
death
The end of the world starts when an ambitious marketing guy gets a cryptic assignment to create an ad campaign to "make ugly sexy."
deathsexual-content
Claire meets a handsome older man at a dinner party held in a virtual reality where something has gone subtly wrong.
A girl reckons with what she must lose–and who she has become–in order to be accepted at the empire’s most prestigious university.
deathviolence
"I express greetings and most joyful salutations! I do not mean to interrupt you if you wish to be without company. It is only that I noticed you have been drifting alone for six flares of star-home-past-great-star-birthplace, and that is many flares! Your...
"If you were to drive to my sister Violet’s house today, you would find yourself at a very different place from the one I encountered on my first trip. The road up the mountain has been paved, for one thing, to make it more accessible to the tourists who...
death-of-a-loved-one
"You’re asleep in dreams of your father holding your head underwater, so the call from Magnolia Assisted Living goes to voicemail. “I didn’t raise a son of mine to count on his fingers,” your father says in the dream—because ah, yes, it’s all of your worst...
abusechild-abuse
"I don’t know if I can die. Maybe when this comet reaches the sun, I’ll keep right on being. Or maybe then, finally, after so long, I will stop. I am not ready to find out. I want to be immortal. To never die as those on your planet do. This place isn’t...
deathviolence
"The following documents have been uncovered by the Bromley Independent with regards to recent events at the local cemetery: the unofficial statements of Mr. Cyril Harris, city councilman; the recently discovered journals of Miss Celia Smith; letters from...
death-of-a-loved-one
"In your head, the dead man wakes up crying. He stutters into awareness just as you manage to stanch the tears welling in your eyes, a response to the pressure of his presence on your limbic system. Your fingers brush, irritated, against the port at the...
An AI car is caught between its ruthless employer and the people she hurt…
death
"Start at the cleave of it, not at Zed’s meat death or Ep’s centuries-long destruction, but at the moment that Zed halves his own mind and walks away. Or as was reported in the internal memorandum, the moment when Pilot-Commander Zeta San Tano killed...
"When Peng opens the door, he finds himself face to face with a boy who looks exactly like himself. The other Peng stands in the doorway, as though surprised to have been caught. Two eyes peering out from the dark. Fluffy black hair, messy enough to stand...
animal-harmchild-abusedeathviolence
"In the beginning of me, I was a bird. A magpie, although I’ve since been a jay and a red-tailed hawk and even a big, black crow, crying tok-tok-tok at every passerby. But the magpie was special: on my first day, I saw those flashing blue wingtips, and I...
death
"In the cloud forests of Paek Sigma II, the inhabitants do not keep time, but stretch and slice it. The first humans who arrived on the planet were amazed by the fauna. There’s the stone-armored petradrakon, draped in twenty thousand scales each a meter...
violencewar
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorviolence
"In one version of the story, nobody dies, and you get to keep the princess as your maid. She chafes against this, longing for her silks and jewels. You scoff, tugging her after you, a tangle of jasmine wound around her arms. She’s tried to break free many...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Anna’s an AI expert who’s called in to figure out what a new upgrade is causing AI-captained ships to destroy themselves.
death
"Big Edie was a useless piece of shit. Johanna Telle found the most significant relationship of her life on a Saturday afternoon in late May, sitting on one of those excruciatingly handmade quilts crafty stay-at-homes used to make out of their precious...
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Graff just had an accident so severe that he can no longer keep the secret that he’s a cyborg from his crewmates and his lover.
An ice-age girl who learns to play the flute has an unusual connection with a future girl starving in a flooded city.
deathviolence
A magician dies on stage performing his most famous trick, but what really happened?
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
After a full memory wipe, Wash moves in with his family and tries to get to know them again with the shadow of his unremembered crime hovering over him.
On the eve of her 20th birthday, Sacrid Henn’s parents send her to an AI prison for her failure to conform. It’s a pleasant prison, but prison nonetheless, and she’s determined to get out.
abuse
In a future Canada, a woman talks to her political-prisoner mother but wonders if it’s just an AI simulation of her.
illness-and-pandemicmental-illness
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathsexual-violenceviolence
A young hockey player charged with murder on the moon seeks asylum on Earth, but unhappy Lunarians are trying to find him.
body-horrordeathmental-illnessviolence
Ostap can’t wait to visit his girlfriend and see her big project that’s trying to use quantum mechanics to develop faster-than-light travel.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
What if you tried to teleport and succeeded? What if you couldn’t manage to do it again?
Vincent lost his mom on one of the first Mars missions. He’s had a career as a successful author, but he’s always refused to talk about his mother. Fifty years later, he tells us how he decided to end his silence and write a book about her.
death-of-a-loved-one
Excelsior lives to write songs, and Nightingale was made to sing them. But the decadent city of Owl Abbas does not deserve either one.
body-horrordeath
The soprano playing Liù keeps trying to change the opera’s gruesome plot, starting with her own death scene.
deathsexual-violenceviolence
Aria just has a few days to save the whole universe from being swallowed up by Zarzak, the infinite love machine.
deathviolence
Chaplin Win is in trouble for letting an unauthorized ghost talk with hospital patients, and inspectors are coming tomorrow.
deathillness-and-pandemic
Somewhere near the every-changing Mocking Tower the Imagi Vert has hidden a sword that holds the soul of the late emperor, and a thief has come to try to steal it.
deathviolence
When the world changed and the sky turned silver, magic became real, Emma Anne became a little girl and her neighbor became a pirate. But can a little girl fight off an attack by the Loping Man?
deathviolence
In Eastern Europe between the wars, Klara works as a kitchen maid. One night she admits a woman she thinks is a lost fairy-tale princesses into the castle.
"The maadiregi at the temple of the talking drum say that there is a word in old Sauúti, the high language of our ancestors, that when spoken backwards, allows the speaker to fly. To take to the sky like a bird, unshackled from the persistent pull that...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"As always, I’m doing a buddy read with MariaReadsALot because she talked me into it, and boy, was she right! What a strange world and what powerful characters Titos Pavlou has created! I can’t stop thinking about this book even though this might be for...
death
"Jay scrubs at the blood spot on her tennis shoe with her thumb and a gob of spit, hurried by the knowledge that Hardy will be there any moment. It’s swelter-hot on the gravel back road, and she’s doused in the sound of cicadas from the forest behind her...
deathviolence
The survivor of an apocalypse event in an alternate universe tries to rebuild and avoid being dragged back into the past when a visitor crosses the in-between and asks for help.
"Now that I’ve failed as a woman, my punishment is to become a garden. I receive the verdict on a Sunday evening. They’re supposed to give you advance notice so you can put your affairs in order, but the letter is postmarked from more than a month ago—I’ve...
body-horrorpregnancy-loss
"My son can’t think of the word “spoon.” It’s there, at the tip of his tongue. The waitress looks at him with a patient smile. She can see he’s fidgeting and getting hot. A boy his age would typically know how to ask. “Could I please have another... ” But...
"Alice wants to hold a funeral for me, which is disconcerting because I’m not dead. But humans, like all aliens—and certainly all single-forms—have their own idiosyncrasies. I’m used to the idiosyncrasies, of course: I’ve lived on Earth—in my tertiary...
death
"There’s nothing quieter than the sound of dreams not coming true. The moment when reality sinks in and Gwen realizes she’s never going to have the one thing she’s been yearning for since high school—the thing she made so much space in her life to...
"I tell Mateo to meet me at a wine bar. It’s a quiet, low-key spot—ideal for first dates, because it’s easy to make a speedy exit in case the red flags start flying—or worse, if the men in blue come knocking. It’s been over an hour, and we’re on our second...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorcannibalismviolence
The sister of an abducted child is haunted by a sinister figure who may or may not be real…
"Mirae sits on her bed, parting her hair with one hand and feeling for the access port on the back of her head with the other. She finds the notched edges of the cap and twists counterclockwise until it comes loose. Her eye twitches as she slides the plug...
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathgoreviolence
Graff isn’t quite human. His people move through the galaxy collecting memories and experiences, recording their lives and passing them on. Then, one day, he breaks: he discovers a chunk of his memory is missing. This should be impossible—he’s never...
"I was finishing the last of my nightly coffee when the nineteen-seventies twins approached my table and asked me to bear witness to their disappearance. This was not an unusual request at Cafe Liminalité, being the locale of patrons that dreamed too much...
death
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
slavery
"A hoodie is what a Soucouyant give birth to when she trick a Midnight Robber.” Or so Rose calls herself. Passed off to orphanages. No idea who her mother and father were. Didn’t know the source of herself. Because she wasn’t given a proper foundation to...
suicide
"You don’t look Sweetbaby in the eye when he pushes out from under the tree throw. We know that now. Instead, the ears, or what’s left of them, are a better place to settle your gaze. They’re close enough to the face that you can tell which way he’s...
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathmental-illnesswar
"Today’s the day I have to make Emma break up with Cameron. I do it in the morning, to get it over with. As I queue Emma up in the Elaffin interface, Gray texts on our private channel, Good luck, Jude. And remember to follow through, even if he bawls. Of...
Alena has momentarily escaped her world and its imminent gravitational collapse by cheating her way into the selection process of the Board of Cosmogamy. By passing this stringent exam, she may finally learn the secrets of building a universe from first...
"INTERVIEWER We’ve spoken about your use of the “weird” in your stories, but have you personally ever experienced anything akin to something that might happen to one of Lovecraft’s characters? BOEKNER Yes — despite all evidence to the contrary, I remain...
"They found the torn lamb in the gold spring grass, beside the gravel road. The flies had found it first. But the flies were still lazy and slow. Later in the season, when they found a feast like this, you would be able to hear them buzzing from a distance."
sexual-violenceviolence
Beni’s a drag queen who reads minds, and he’s shopping for a new dress and the story that goes with it.
abusechild-abusepregnancy-loss
Alice prefers to stay in human form, but one of her own kind is after her seeking vengeance, and she’s got to find a way to protect herself before he finds her.
violence
"Charlie wasn’t a ghost standing in the corners of the house, but at the same time he was everywhere. He had been haunting my thoughts since we received Uncle Jamey’s emails and the plane tickets. Now, everyone gathered at our mother’s house, my childhood...
deathracismsubstance-usesuicideviolence
"The tree has many names, in many languages: Yggdrasil, Kalpavriksha, Jian-Mu, Ashvattha. It stands at the nexus of worlds, dark matter coiling around its roots, the rim of the universe held aloft by its ever-expanding crown. Its branches bend spacetime,...
When he’s caught kissing another boy, one of Izuchukwu’s two big secrets comes out. But if they find out he can turn into a bird and fly, he’ll be in real trouble.
abusehomophobia
Nora has a tendency of turning into whatever she’s dating. She became a rock climber when she dated a rock climber, a comedian when she dated a comedian. But the amateur acupuncturist goes differently.
Dez is abandoning his acting career in mourning for Cherie, his one true love. But there is a technology that can temporarily bring her back—or something like her, anyway.
body-horrordeath-of-a-loved-onesubstance-use
Vera grew up in America, but she was born in Winter, a mysterious, very cold European country. She thinks she’s left it all behind, but it finds a way to come for her.
death
When Suss is human, she’s in awful pain, but when she’s a wolf, she keeps getting in trouble. She has friends, but people are getting tired of it all.
animal-harm
After eighteen years, a colony ship reaches Neptune, and the children born on board wonder what their future holds.
With tremendous powers of regeneration, Mars is an incomparable killing machine, but he’s on the run, and there’s one special prisoner he’s determined to rescue.
deathgoreviolence
We follow this history of black people from prehistoric Ghana all the way to a lunar colony.
abuseracismslaveryviolencewar
A seriously subverted version of the story of Sleeping Beauty, starting with what happened when all the fairies at the party got stinking drunk.
As the last stars in the universe are dying, an entity piloting an enormous starship that used to be the Earth tries to decide what to do next.
death
To return to power, the godlike Hollow Ones recruit Spear to kill the Great Beasts that hold the laws of reality in place, and Hark to cook them so they can absorb their power. Only one remains before the end of the world as they know it.
body-horrorgoreviolence
A young man living with his family on an interstellar survey ship goes through a lot of changes when there’s a crew exchange with another ship.
Master Zhao shares his tale of how he discovered his time-travel ability and what he’s done with it. But why hasn’t he used it to become more successful?
deathillness-and-pandemicsubstance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathracismsexual-violenceviolence
An Australian detective investigates a woman who apparently killed her husband and children before disappearing.
child-deathdeathviolence
Constantius, a con man on the run from the law, arrives in Sempa on business of his own, but lets himself get tangled up in the problems of a girl he met on his way into town.
deathsuicide
When Reyna kills a rot hound, she knows her dead sister’s prophecy is coming true, and there’s not much time to convince the rest of the hold they all need to flee.
deathslaveryviolencewar
Delilah makes some money modeling, and Crispin offers twice what anyone else does. He never lets her look at the works in progress, though. He has his reasons.
violence
This story follows Amir and Mani’s careers starting when they’re teenagers in water-starved Beirut.
sexual-content
Only Marianne can see that her new brother-in-law is a horror, and although she knows she can summon the faeries to get rid of him, she also knows the price will be very high.
child-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onepregnancy-lossviolence
The time travelers across the road think they’re being clever, but Jade’s family spotted them right away. Even so, they’ve got a daughter her age, and she wants to make friends.
She was only ten when they kidnapped her to train as an assassin, but now she’s sixteen and she needs to prove herself.
violence
The Dunyshar are stranded on an outpost, but NuTay dreams of going home to Earth.
A disabled human veteran takes in a disabled AI veteran. The AI doesn't talk anymore due to trauma, but Tawn tries to get through to it, even though his mother thinks it's dangerous.
war
Around 2650 AD, the narrator interviews a wealthy recluse who lives above the sunken ruins of Boston.
A woman appears to be helping a child recover from some form of brain damage. His perceptions and memory are off, but something is off about her too.
child-deathdeathviolence
A young, newly minted witch meets an equally green knight, and they go off together in search of dragons.
abuseviolence
Raised by her grandmothers, Aviya thinks about her future, and thinks about trying to find the source of a magical scrap of "cloth of the wind."
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
What if rhinoceroses behaved like human beings and talked about their upcoming extinction during book club meetings?
death-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrormental-illness
A disabled son care-taking for a disabled father tries to understand the mysterious blur haunting them.
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Steve, over here! Turn to your right. Can we get a smile?” He falls back on his training easily enough, turns to the cameras, gives them his famous crooked smile, tilts his head just so as the flashes go off so they can capture the smoulder that...
"Dead gods,” says Aunte Gull as she heaves the shimmering nets, “are almost as useless as live ones.” We work together, numb to the sea cold. We haul our catch back to shore, and I save my breath for work, knowing my aunte’s way of speaking. She is...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"Alvin’s scripts arrived in yellow envelopes. They were hand delivered, placed inside his letter box as if part of the regular mail, but with no address or stamps on it. The scripts were typed on unlined paper. They were short, never longer than a page,...
deathviolence
"# Unit COFFEE_VENDOR.06 # Notification of new update 09:00 A.M. [Installing update_Exp.42] Process: 100% complete Self-execute (update_Exp.42); # Time of new interaction: 10:24 A.M. input: options = cappuccino; sugar = 3; if (input == (options =...
"They even took the violins. Every last one of them: Amadeus, Josephine, Mulberry, Nestor. They came into the house through the front door, guests without a host, a peculiar band of invited thieves. Plugged into my power station as a seemingly...
death-of-a-loved-one
"The sun sets again over Chang’an. The remaining light of dusk shines through thick clouds like melted gold, flowing down over the glazed tiles of the palace roofs. The first drumbeat of the evening rings out from the Cheng Tian Gate, followed by a series...
death
"Memories of Memories Lost" by Mahmud El Sayed is a story about the price of the things we choose to forget. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Mahmud El Sayed, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition read by Karim Kronfli and produced by Lian...
A post-human civilization of synthetic beings, fixated on the concept of children, grapples with the meaning of life…after life ceases to exist.
body-horrordeath
"Fejértorony There’s dysphoria, and then there’s turning into a mid-size city. But sometimes you try male, you try female, you try different kinds of nonbinary and it only makes you realize that something still doesn’t quite fit, something fundamental....
racismviolence
"A man who will be given a second name in ten thousand years and a man whose name will be forgotten sit in a forest, or perhaps a grassy plain, or perhaps a cold tundra. It is a biome that will not exist in ten thousand years but whose footprint will be...
mental-illnesssuicide
It’s just business as usual at the Bureau of Metahuman, Mutant, and Occult Affairs until an employee for the government agency begins to wonder if work is following her home…
"Imagine: purple-haired girl shooting down the moon.” I type the prompt into the black screen as if making a request to God. The blurred shape of a head appears in four variations over a pixelated ocean of gray. The eyes, corrugated whites, slowly take...
abusesexual-contentviolence
"In July 2088, shortly after I woke up from cryosleep, I received a copy of 2181 Overture. Assuming the book was science fiction, I didn’t even bother touching it. My only concern was how I could adjust to the new world I found myself thrown into. After...
deathillness-and-pandemic
"Muna shuts the storeroom door as quietly as she can. Holding a just-waxed bundle of letters to her chest, she sticks out her head to check the bookshop floor. If she walks between the shelves on the far right, she can slip out unnoticed in ten heartbeats....
"Tarma had only just begun the Widow Fenton’s flax when the Shadow Undying rose once more. At first she thought that the shutter on the upper window must have come unwedged, since the light shouldn’t have failed so early in the day. But the unholy chanting...
death
"Their power is how they can turn you into one of them. That’s the trick of it, see. You can go in with your swords and sacrifice, you can go in with your red heart and good intentions, and they will grin with their white teeth and say, “Welcome to Grey &...
A woman who fears she’s failing as a painter and as an artist seeks inspiration from one of her favorite poets and finds something even more wondrous, but also more impossible to capture on canvas…
"Kwayask nātohta. Listen carefully. There once was a woman who sewed clothes so powerful they made you become the person you needed to be. Children’s feet wrapped in her flower-beaded moccasins never stumbled. Otipēyimisowak orators, backs held straight by...
An all-but-forgotten demigod bets everything on one last gambit to secure his future before he fades from existence. Copyright khōréō magazine 2022. Story by Guan Un, edited by Rowan Morrison. Audio edition read by Guan Un, edited by Lian Xia Rose, with...
violence
Jack Wolcott was only twelve years old when she and her twin sister Jill, descended the impossible staircase and found herself in the Moors, a world of drowned gods and repugnant royals. After abandoning her sister to a vampire lord, and under the tutelage...
death
"I didn’t expect the trailer to feel so small and that some of the blood would still be wet. But I must have expected some blood because I cuffed my jeans before going in. And I didn’t expect the cats would have come back—a window was open, its screen...
deathviolence
"Jinah stands in her old underwear and scrapes the future from women’s skin. Their scales fall to the floor. The women sit up scoured red and smooth. The scales are impossible to see unless you’ve learned how to look, but impossible to miss once you’ve...
"The Noon Witch is not a cat person. She likes the color purple, hates police procedurals, loves breakfast foods, thinks scented bath products and anchovy pizza are gross. Hates platform shoes. Hates walnuts in brownies. Used to like the electropop group...
"A four-hour drive between me and my parents is a distance that works well for everybody. I can come back for a weekend, but they don’t call me back for every little thing. So when Mom did call me at work in the middle of the day and said, “Your father is...
"When they ordered me down off my pedestal, I had nowhere else to go. Life as a statue is easy. They make you ascend the pedestal, turn you to stone, remove your ability to move, and leave you to watch the turn of the seasons in a world you cannot touch or...
abuseviolence
"Today one of the minders rolls one Veena Kaur Chan into my hairbay for a shampoo and cut. New client, transferring in from Palliative. Brainstem stroke. Unsuccessful rehabilitation. Pancreatic cancer. Ouch. Triple whammy. As the newly implemented...
deathillness-and-pandemic
"Yennie glanced out the window. An ice storm, a froth of glassy dust, was blowing in over the bone-colored hills. He was on Enceladus; his therapist was on Mars. He wanted to describe how sometimes his body felt hollow, and other times he felt his skin...
"Your grandfather is dead. Your instance gave you the news: a phone call in the dead of night that woke you from a dead sleep. “Hello?” you said, accented with slumber. “Is this Soyoung Kang?” your own voice said, accented with Korean. “Yes,” you said. The...
death-of-a-loved-one
"Good art changes you. And that was the point, right? That’s what the social media ad that caught my attention wanted me to believe: Our Shoes: You couldn’t understand our struggle... Until now. I had read the line over and over again during a rare...
racism
For the residents of this mycological ecosystem, creating art feeds the World around you and requires working in harmony with your inner voice. When one artist’s voice begins screaming, he’s forced to travel farther than he ever has before to reconcile...
"As the people began to die, desperation drove us to the depths of the sea for cures. We mined mineral-rich vents until the tube worms went extinct, stripped polymetallic nodule fields bare, squeezed sludge out of sea sponges to treat the new diseases,...
deathillness-and-pandemic
"Seated on the balcony of the house across the street is a man. He is slumped in his chair and has remained unmoving for several hours. The tattered frays of his agbada spreads about his person like an old sailcloth, snapping in the wind. His equally...
death-of-a-loved-one
A generation ship arrives at its target planet only to discover a civilization has arisen in the centuries since it was launched. The captain sends the navigator out to explore the planet and see if there’s a place for them there.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Even as a grad student, Sarah Levy focused on her research to the detriment of her family, and things only get worse when she makes a breakthrough discovery.
death-of-a-loved-one
Exile’s End is a complex, sometimes uncomfortable examination of artifact repatriation and cultural appropriation. An artifact of indescribable and irreplaceable beauty created by an “extinct” culture has been the basis of another culture’s origin stories....
Awenato is the only Uma’u on the space station after terrorists kill the rest of the diplomats from his world, including his lifemate. He wants revenge, but first he has to figure out how to just get by.
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorwar
On his deathbed, a man implores his son to visit his plaque at their ancestral temple—which appears to exist in virtual reality.
When the Dynast dies, his daughter Lin flees before her older siblings can kill her. She has a place of safety in mind, but she’s never been there herself and needs help to get in.
deathviolence
The story of how Belezal, a war refugee in Khalem managed to escape to a better country and how he came to terms with having lost not one but two homelands.
The narrator undergoes a special treatment that lets her revisit (and change) key memories that trouble her—all of which involve people she had sex with.
sexual-contentsexual-violencesubstance-use
Glenn and Vivian are Berkley students with a good thing going up until he finds out what she really does for a living, and it’s literally out of this world.
In 2028, Kitty has a role in a play about a mass murder committed in 1978, but when she visits the setting of the crime, she’ll pulled into the past right before the crimes take place.
abusedeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horror
An old woman travels to Beijing to find out what’s wrong with her son, and she relates her story to a taxi driver on the way home.
An aspiring young stage magician meets an older magician over coffee to try to convince him to share some of his tricks. And to show him a few of his own.
Since her cancer, Sydney has just been drifting through life, but when she lets a friend move in, things change in an unexpected way.
illness-and-pandemic
A mother talks to a scan of her daughter taken just a month before, ah, something happened. It’s a short conversation but it packs quite a punch.
death-of-a-loved-one
After memory-loss plague strikes the world, Gouda helps clients track missing family members they can barely remember—even though she can’t even remember her own last name.
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrordeathviolence
Sa races in dangerous places throughout time and space, but she’s getting old, the challengers are ruthless, and there are a lot of ways to get hurt in this sport.
A closeted young Hawaiian man bails a devious Native-American god out of a Honolulu jail and watches his life spiral out of control.
substance-use
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death-of-a-loved-one
The narrator, a young regenitrix in Victorian London, tries to help an older one have her baby. For a regenitrix swiftly regrows any lost body parts, but childbirth is always fatal.
deathsexual-violence
The narrator’s homelife has fallen apart since she told her husband she’s asexual, so they order a device that looks and talks like her, but with “improvements.”
mental-illnesssexual-contentsuicide
The narrator makes a deal with the Devil—or one of his snakes, at least. She thinks she’s clever, but one deal leads to another.
animal-harmself-harmsubstance-useviolence
Ancient nanotech controls a few humans to enforce harsh anti-technology rules on a reluctant population. Colton escaped its control at the cost of losing all emotion, and he struggles to be accepted by a caravan that’s trying to evade some of the restrictions.
deathviolencewar
Ben Clarke travels to Hollywood to settle his late brother’s affairs. He learns a variety of things about his brother, but the biggest surprise is what he finds in the bedroom.
deathsubstance-usesuicide
As the seas have risen, terrible things have come crawling out of them. Jersey wants Mir to come with him and move inland, but she won’t go without her disabled father.
body-horrorchild-deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violenceviolence
Shemesh returns from his mission on planet Kadesh to face inquisition by the Exiliarch. What really happened when he met the heretic there?
violence
Edgar Allan Poe’s writing has brought a creature into this world and it inhabits a young woman who wants to be rid of it. It has its own agenda.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-onesuicide
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
abusedeathgoreillness-and-pandemicsexual-contentsubstance-usesuicideviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorcannibalismdeathgoreviolence
A dead woman sees her doppelgänger watching over her remains and wonders what she's up to.
deathsexual-violenceviolence
Agatha wants a svelte replacement for her plump body, but since she can't get one grown in a reasonable time, she looks into an illegal swap.
body-horrorviolence
Ava recounts the visit of the "Needlers" to Earth and her part in the attempts to communicate with the aliens.
Fresh out of prison for hacking, Aedo gets a request to do an even bigger hack. But why does Energy Davison want to hack its own systems?
Unknown Compartment There is no door where there should be a door—no hall where there should be a hall. The house has reconfigured itself, again, and I find myself before […]
body-horrordeathviolence
"It was perhaps inevitable you would arrive at the Goblin Library. You begin your walk at the open window of the Goblin Reading Room where your grappling hook bit the sandstone windowsill. Cries of alarm and dismay follow you up from the streets below, yet...
death
"I heard you’re returning to our world again. What do you want here exactly, Orhija? The Earth is dying slowly. It’s losing its sheen and glow. The blackness of the soil that you used to say was as beautiful as mine has changed since you left. It’s redder...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrordeathsuicide
"We put my body double together in June Lee’s basement. Her mom was one of those chill Asian moms who liked having an artsy-fartsy daughter she could brag about at Bible study. She was already pushing the whole portfolio-for-college-apps deal, so she...
"The kids like Luzhanqi because it’s a non-perfect strategy game: a bridge as they make their way onto bigger, more serious things, like chess and Go. It’s something that even the most incompetent of them could hope to win. Sometimes you just get lucky....
"For a long time now I’d been practicing liecraft five or six times before breakfast. I’d roll over to Khao’s side of the bed and murmur through the curls of hair winding around his ear: “Go back to sleep, it’s only just daybreak.” Other times I’d hide his...
body-horrorchild-abuseviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horrorgoresuicide
As a young scholar sets out on a research project to find the stones where the settlers of Iceland made human sacrifices, a long dormant volcano rouses…and other, long-sleeping horrors might also be stirring.
"We lost so many souls today. Reports stream in across five continents; icons bloom on the map like blood spatters. Broken filters, zero latency, bandwidth that somehow blew through the roof when no one was looking. The hardware plays catch-up as best it...
"The Alamgir Dynasty has been guiding the Kingdom of Hindustan through centuries of peace, prosperity, and stability. Yet, credit does not rest solely on the wisdom of our modern kings; from the earliest days of what was then called the Alamgiri Empire,...
death-of-a-loved-one
"Ms. Otter came to Kearney when the day was dying, and her shadow ran down the broken road ahead of her like a line of bad luck. Jeremiah saw it when he paused to get a drink, his stained hands leaving brown fingerprints on his canteen. It was hot—all the...
"On the high plains of Kansas in a tiny town worn down by drought, I stop at a roadside diner. When I ask for water, the waitress pours me a glass of ice water, presenting it with obvious pride. “We have our own well,” she says. “And the wind turbine on...
death-of-a-loved-one
"After we kill our father but before we leave the island, we argue. Cal doesn’t want to go; he’s afraid of the water. Even after the rest of us outvote him two to one, he refuses to move, crouching on the ground, pressing the ruined side of his face into...
abusedeathviolence
Even death is no match for a trio of elderly, stubborn, ever-sparring sisters, who refuse to rest in peace while their grudges live on…
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Flyer 247-3 hasn’t flown in five days. In these five days, she has become accustomed to the hum and whine of the air filtration system cranked to its highest setting. She has become accustomed to her cell, four paces long, four paces wide. Its lack of...
An engineer who frequently travels for her job, suddenly finds herself in airports other than the one she arrived in…
"We drove out to Joshua Tree for the star party—a gathering of amateur astronomers under a clear, dark sky. It was Holly’s idea, an impromptu adventure on a Friday after work: “Hey, Lou, do you want to go look at the moon tonight?” Holly had the best ideas...
child-deathviolence
"For anyone who’s used the Skip system to travel more than once or twice, delays are simply part of the process. The one following my transit to Olympus lasts longer than most. I pass the time by looking for a way to bend the causative incident behind the...
"Half-painted in the angled mirror, I ignore my mother’s calls and sweep blush onto my temples. The face of Luz Divinity takes shape beneath my brush. My mother tries again as I tug a wig onto my shaved head, the unit sleek and long, and again as I zip a...
"Scarlett’s eyes had to be perfect. Jon was the artist who’d made her, so it bothered him to think that so much of Scarlett would be crafted by other people. Scarlett’s limbs were carved from silicon polymer and coated in a soft synthetic skin from the...
body-horrorsexual-contentviolence
"Nate doesn’t often receive wedding invitations. This year, he gets seven. To be fair, the first one is work, so he doesn’t even get to pick his outfit. But an olive-scented breeze squirrels joyfully through his hair; waiters bring out little triangles of...
death
A comatose patient undergoes an experimental procedure that uses favorite childhood stories to pull the patient back into consciousness—but the experiment doesn’t go quite as planned…
deathviolence
"Got a new one for you,” the mover said. Small man, in neat overalls, wheeling the box on the stacker. That’s what the robot saw when they opened the box and let it out. It stepped cautiously out into sunshine. An unfamiliar city skyline, a boxy...
deathwar
"Your payment first. The Badchen Yankel is too aged, too well-traveled, and too experienced to extend credit to an audience. Now pinch your lips and listen. It was the year of their lord 1618, and we’re two days outside Grodne when we run into the demons....
"In his early days in slivermoon, Saki worked the phone lines. Companies in slivermoon stressed in prestige magazines and press releases that it was too hard for them to employ bodies. Bodies were expensive to sustain. Bodies needed food, warmth, and...
In "Kwong's Bath" by Angela Liu, Kwong is visited by the ghosts of the people she has trouble letting go. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Angela Liu, edited by Sachiko Ragosta. Audio edition read by Lauren Kong, with casting and production by...
death-of-a-loved-oneself-harmsuicide
"Umeboshi" by Rebecca Nakaba is an exploration of what it means to be connected through heritage—and chain email. Copyright khōréō magazine 2023. Story by Rebecca Nakaba, edited by Sachiko Ragosta. Audio edition read by Heidi Tabing, with sound design by...
body-horror
"The fireflies lead me to the clearing where my lover waits patiently. I can see her illuminated by the light of the moon. She stands under the udala tree, an image of perfection, her dark skin glowing in the silvery moonlight. The warmth of excitement...
violence
"My cat hops up to his favorite spot by the window to observe the nebula, the pitter-patter of his paws and the low hum-rumble of the engine the only sounds in the room. Misty tendrils amble past, glimmering and cloudlike, carrying an entire medley of warm...
death
"Your mother spends every evening working on her machine. It looks like no other machine you’ve seen. A hunk of metal on the ground, with wires stringing each section to the next. Like the inside of a giant robot’s belly, if someone cut it open to expose...
"Our generation ship never grows. Our faces—varied as the stars that swaddle us, far from everything we knew—never age. Do we learn, cut off from all the past? Do we change? I’ve asked myself these questions, and so many more, over the...
suicide
"I’m licking mala algae off a thin yellow and blue P sheet that says Nutterfinger when I notice the walls in my home are vibrating. Nothing ever happens in our world surrounded by P. P is what we call the material that makes up our world, and it’s what we...
"I did not want to write a report for this book, but Lady Koi-Koi convinced me to, even though she says it “does a disservice to our own stories.”1 I also have to pass my WAEC, and this book is on our reading list for the mock exam, so, fine. I will...
"Ask me something only I would know.” You say this to your wife because you know you’re human. You can feel it in the familiar ache in your back, and the fear writhing in your guts. You feel it in the cold seeping into your bare feet from the kitchen...
body-horrordeathviolence
"Our storytellers sing that the Great River Gimamu brought life to the world when the gods first stepped out of it. But when I saw the ships that morning, I knew that it also brought death. As I sat at my stall, weaving the final threads of a new basket, I...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"The little girl was blonde and had very blue eyes. She stood on the steps to the house and stared at Mara without expression. “It lives in the closet,” the little girl said. “Klara…” her father said. He looked apologetically at Mara. “Please,” he said....
"For Julie, it was the cryptid out in the woods behind our old elementary school. Wings, red eyes. Yes, Julie came back knowing exactly when everyone she loved was going to die, but it was worth it, she told us. The six of us—well, five after Sophie...
deathviolence
"Because I could, that’s why. Because the technology was there and if I didn’t do it somebody else would. Because I, perhaps naively, expected the acclaim of a grateful world and quite possibly a Nobel Prize. But chiefly I did it because the science was so...
violence
"Today is upgrade day and Gabriel, a model 2098 post-human intelligence robotic service assistant, wears an appropriately festive hat. The perfect cone of polka-dotted purple paper slopes to one side of his head, his glossy plastic surface giving the weak...
"Herein is the account of the evening the crew of the Forever Trying invited the Grand Faerie Lord of Vast Space and Its Great Mysteries into our home. I, Felix, Chronicler of the ship, endeavor to capture a true and accurate record of transpired events on...
"The last nectarine from the spaceship glistens in Riley’s palm, an imperfect globe smelling like summer. She nestles among the blue-tinted ferns of Ekara C, cupping the nectarine like a tiny sun. The first bite is primal, her mouth swollen with juice that...
"I find Aleda’s scale, sticky with ichor, tucked between the tentacles of our pink anemone bed. I tweeze it out from the undulating appendages with my thumb and index finger and flounder against my escalating heart rate. Aleda’s swishing back and forth,...
"Leo Gregory is losing altitude. He coasts on the thermals of a legacy fading behind him: a documentary here, a retrospective there, some greatest-hits collection down in the corner for the dilettantes. Oh, the work has lost none of its grandeur: his...
illness-and-pandemic
A student of multiversal time travel slips from one version of New York to another, discovering that love may transcend timelines, but so too can heartbreak…
"Monday’s lover tugs at Jan’s ribbon with his teeth. Jan doesn’t yell at the lover to stop. The guy just received bad news from the front—a friend lost to a bomb, perhaps, a sibling blown to bits; Jan doesn’t ask. He tells the lover, instead, to be...
war
"There was a shop in old Haifa that specialised in Treif artefacts, so that was where Mili went first. Haifa sprawled along the side of Mount Carmel. Successive waves of regeneration didn’t do much to change it. Now adaptoplant buildings sprouted like...
deathviolence
"A small asteroid swerved in a most un-asteroid-like way and pierced the hull of the archivist’s ship, as though it was determined to drive her away. But she was just getting started. She slammed the emergency foam release button, holding her breath even...
illness-and-pandemic
Children have always disappeared under the right conditions—slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere... else. Adventures are always interesting, but they’re...
A boy, desperate to escape the drudgery of life in his small town, gets caught up in the machinations of a traveling time keeper, and slowly watches his town and his life unravel by the seams.
death-of-a-loved-one
"When the sparkling golden glow fades and my skin stops feeling like mites are crawling all over it, the Room is gone, and I am shivering in a vast bright chamber and strange people clad in orange, red, and blue pajamas are asking me how I am. I don’t know...
"It is in the summer, during the monsoon season in Taipei, when the pigeon keeper’s daughter moves into the apartment on the top floor of a building on an alleyway in Wenshan District. From her window, she sees not only Taipei 101 in the distance with...
"There’s a story that sounds completely fantastic and yet is true. It happened here and in the neighboring lands. It goes like this: Once upon a time, there was an ocean, deep and cold. And in the ocean there was salt. For a long time, salt did not know...
pregnancy-loss
A series of interviews between a young, clean-cut journalist and an alternative, independent pichal pairi turns into an unexpected romance. But their relationship is tested when the entire world around them shuts down.
"The first time I saw her, she stood in the arch of the gate, a black spindle against the open stretch of road. I looked up from where I was kneeling in the garden and couldn’t look away. Head to toe in black, her face veiled. The air smelled like new...
"The first thing I asked, when the mage-king gave me a mouth, was whether he had given me a soul. His people’s beloved king, who held back the lords of the undead when they came roving; by whose conquering hand the strongholds were fed in the long fallow...
abusedeath-of-a-loved-onesexual-violence
Author : Kel Coleman Narrator : Hollis Monroe Host : Tina Connolly Audio Producer : Summer Brooks Discuss on Forums Delete Your First Memory for Free was originally published in FIYAH Magazine Issue 17 (January 2021). Delete Your First Memory for Free by...
"When Golem opened her eyes for the first time, she saw Magda. “You are Golem,” Magda whispered, her oil-stained fingers prodding Golem’s metal joints. “Golem,” the machine repeated, the rust along the two half-tin cans forming her jaw chipping onto...
deathviolencewar
"Ursa Major got right the fuck out of our universe on the very afternoon she learned there were other options. It was the lucky break of her life that she just happened to be there, a short sprint from one of those points where the alien aethertrain...
"I was told I must swear fealty to William the Bastard. He had taken England, made himself king, fealty was required. But I did not swear and none could make me. He could kill me, or rather order his men to kill me. But he would not, because he wanted to...
violence
"I hate Original Diana immediately, or at least I want to hate her. Nothing should surprise me about her appearance, yet I’m embarrassed to be excited to look like her when I’m in my forties. My cheeks get hot when I think about how I held out a shred of...
abuse
"Here’s the thing you need to know to understand this story: I was meant to be an only child. The doctors, when they examined my mother, only counted one heartbeat. One. Me. I don’t know when my sister came along. My mother, so ready to accept, so...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
An escaped droid with a downloaded human mind crashes on a hostile planet, where she finds an alien artifact and desperately tries to convince it to help her.
Babysitting/bodyguarding a group of rich kids should be easy money, especially for a tough joker-ace like Khan—provided he doesn’t end up killing them himself.
violence
"A pause only Winnifletch herself notices, a twinge in her guts as she unsacks the gull that Gert Mews has lugged to her sea-spindle shack. Dazed but not dead, the bird crawks down onto her workbench. Think of shearwater honey, Winni tells herself, with...
animal-harm
Young Wipwai’s tribe has always fought their neighbors, but she’s secretly made friends with one of them, and they plot a future of peace.
child-deathdeathviolence
The narrator tries to find the path to the impossible ocean at the top of the mountain to dispose of the ashes of his/her parents, but there are obstacles in the way.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
"Truth be told, I have not done much with the entryway. It keeps up appearances. I am told it is a perfectly acceptable facsimile of a standard human receiving room. My handlers nod approvingly when I sit them on its low velvet cushions and shallow couch...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Every Halloween, an elderly woman hands out candy to a young trick-or-treater who’s dressed as a witch each time, looking exactly the same age. With each passing year, the woman grows more attached to the little witch and her odd nature. But she is no...
death
Sorrow Farregon is a master perfumer, but the Queen wants something to make her conceive a child—which is challenging when the King is a clockwork automaton.
deathsuicide
"Juana thought this was bullshit. She had found the broken sailboat in the south wind and tried to pilot it to Hispaniola, but it wouldn’t go in the right direction. You’d think flying would be the hard part, but no, it was steering. And you’d think...
child-deathdeath
We learn the fates of three young villagers who follow the advice of the magic conch shell, which always offers two choices about the future and is never wrong.
misogyny
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
A century into its journey, a ship’s cameras transmit images of cannibalism back to Earth, and the authorities debate sending a destruct signal.
cannibalism
An occult detective and a creature work and love together across multiple lifetimes.
deathsexual-contentviolence
Junior went out to fix one of the company’s holographic Jesuses that had started cursing. He knew he wasn’t supposed to get in a religious argument with the old lady, but she was very insistent.
abusesexual-violence
As Charlotte’s husband sinks into early Alzheimer’s, he becomes more and more obsessed with a cult religious figure known only as The Reverend.
deathviolence
J11-L arrives at the target planet 95,000 years after the race that built it died, but it proceeds with its terraforming mission nevertheless.
Four different groups of people explore the pros and cons of different ways to reproduce in the future.
death
Meena’s plan to send a tiny starship to Alpha Centauri with a downloaded copy of her own mind goes awry when the starship hits something when it’s just a fraction of the way there.
deathviolence
In a hostile, ruined Earth, a teenage girl struggles with the consequences of the death of her twin sister.
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneviolence
After 500 years, the King of Myth and Shadow is getting bored, so he decides to take a vacation in New York City.
A half-ghost gets a premonition that the Emperor has died, and his ghost ship flies off to Homeworld because whoever gets the Emperor’s ghost first gets free wishes.
deathsexual-contentviolence
In which grown up Gerda and Kay from “The Snow Queen” get separated, and she goes after him again, finding that much has changed and yet a lot is just the same.
misogynysexual-violenceviolence
A songwriter and her boyfriend seclude themselves at his old family cabin back in the woods to work on a new album. But in the isolation, she has trouble getting work done, and reality itself seems a little off.
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death-of-a-loved-one
Everyone has a timer on their wrists counting down the years, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds until they meet their soul mates. Fiona’s just 24, and her timer says she’ll have to wait 40 years. So what to do until then?
Kleave’s life is upended when a freak accident disables all three of the archives where he stores copies of his experiences and memories.
Chime’s husband is also another woman’s wife. The sharing isn’t a problem, per se: she has her own wife when she’s male. The problem is that she keeps getting him back in increasingly beat-up condition.
They say that when women throw themselves into the sea, they turn into seals. Teen-age Louise, dying of tuberculosis, finds a magical seal skin that turns her into a new person. Then the owner shows up.
abusesuicideviolence
The two-tongued Jeremy app helps lots of kids with their schoolwork, but Jeremy thinks it’s asking too much of him, and he’s afraid to try to turn it off.
abusechild-abusesuicide
An alien brain transplanted into a human child’s body serves as an involuntary translator. It’s not supposed to have volition or memories, but things don’t always work as advertised.
sexual-violenceviolence
Summer of 1955, the last summer of high school. Mike remembers his girlfriend and how wonderful it was being in love. And he remembers the awful things that happened at the end.
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Every time Joe get injured in battle, damaged parts of him get replaced with “smart” artificial organs. So smart that they have their own ideas about what’s good for Joe.
Snow White’s life with the prince isn’t going so well, and her wicked stepmother—now a prisoner—seems determined to torment her about it.
child-abusedeathviolence
Jared has almost brought the princess to safety, but he worries that Kat, the crazy women who accompanies them, might have betrayed them.
sexual-violenceviolence
Sam is a talented hacker who extracts Jane’s personal info in order to seduce her.
Jin is a mercenary hired to protect archeologists investigating an ancient ship built by the extinct human race.
child-deathdeathviolence
After the government rules he isn't really human, Chris loses his human wife and hybrid kids.
child-deathdeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
A government agent secretly watches Ryx (age 10) and Hector (age 19) because they both have dangerous “variant” abilities.
deathsubstance-use
In 1912 Cairo, the police investigate the apparent murder of an immortal Djinn.
deathviolence
Disguised in the body of a dead little boy, Fox needs to escape from the colony before the revolutionary leaders find him. But the boy's brother may be a problem.
death
Electricity does strange things around Arthur, especially when he gets excited. He's excited about Christina, so their first date is going to be a real adventure.
sexual-content
Zhou is an ad man for a Chinese marketing firm, and he has to find a way to get people to buy a new photo technology that has unusual capabilities.
Ellie is trying to catch a train from Boston to DC so she can visit her ailing mother when her sister calls to tell her she needs to "go to the skunkworks and repair the physics of this universe."
illness-and-pandemic
In alternate-history America, an uplifted chimp gets certified as a person and goes to the moon.
Young scientist trying to develop time travel encounters an alien intelligence that lives outside of time.
death
All the imaginary creatures a young person could want to make apartment life more pleasant.
"Dear Francesca, First off: I know that’s not your name. I haven’t gone and mistaken you for another woman—one of my many conquests, I imagine you imagine (what must imaginary you think of imaginary me?). You’ll notice, if you glance ahead, that I’ve...
sexual-content
Graff and his crew face a particularly nasty challenge – an opponent so low-tech they might just have the advantage in this fight.
deathviolence
"On the necropolis space station of the Tau Andromeda planetary system, the keepers of the tomb attended to the dead and the dying. They cleansed, prepared, and prayed over the bodies. They performed the last rites, paying intricate attention to the...
death
"They are travelling in the great dark before them nothing behind them stars just the two of them the man that captains and the ship that sails darts flies through space —whoever said space is empty did not know what they were talking about space is full...
body-horrorsexual-content
"I was so excited to be working on the locomotives I’d loved since childhood. I’d been given an opportunity no one else in the valley had ever received. But suddenly I understood the conflicting emotions of pride and worry I’d seen in my parents. I trusted...
child-deathviolence
A traumatized time traveler keeps traveling back to his past to punish his younger self. Over multiple loops, he learns to forgive himself. Copyright khōréō magazine 2025. Story by Samir Sirk Morató, edited by Danai Christopoulou. Audio edition read by...
child-abuseself-harmviolence
A transnational adoptee is haunted by the ghost of his birth mother. Content warnings: Self-harm, suicidal ideation Copyright © 2025 khōréō magazine. Story by Woody Dismukes, edited by Isabella Kestermann. Audio edition read by Sam Cavalcanti, with...
body-horrorgoreself-harm
"Dekar Druid lives in an infinite library. Besides Ebizenum, who is in a special category of their own, he is the only living person in the library’s single tower. Outside, a forest surrounds the tower. There’s a lake a short walk to the north and a peak...
"Once upon a time, on a spaceship traveling through the divide between galaxies, a married couple was bickering about whose job it was to clean the mouse shit that’d accumulated in the reactor tubes."
"The men knew before she did. Before this boy, before sophomore year, before even her twelfth birthday, they had jostled her on the sidewalk and hooted from cars, searching for something just past her skin. But now, with her panties stripped off and the...
goresexual-violenceviolence
"Attention, please,” the Manager says over the office intercom. “The Auditor’s shuttle is scheduled to dock in one hour. I repeat, one hour. Warehouse staff, please ensure that all inventory is in place.”
"The city of Nan Rhok stands on the ridge of a great mountain, where a gullet of steaming water flows from volcanic hot springs. The ridge is narrow and the mountain chill, so the city hews close to the spring, building high its granite towers. The name of...
child-deathdeath
"The buffet was infinite. It existed in a pocket dimension, via some sort of technological jiggering of the sort that you have heard about before and, unless you are totally anal, don’t want to hear about now. You could probably summon an explanation that...
cannibalismgoreviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
gorehomophobiaviolence
"Oscar’s Digital Double comes two hours, thirty-eight minutes, and eleven seconds late. Maxine snatches the package from the delivery drone and doesn’t tip. She rearranged her day—went to HMart right when it opened, skipped the gym, cooked Grandma a quick...
child-deathdeathsuicide
A woman returning to her family’s home town for a wedding discovers why people in Connorville—including her family—might be more than they seem.
body-horrorgoreviolence
"Night to day. In Diyu, the Earth Prison, Chun Wei opened her eyes. “Day” in the realm of the dead registered only as a less pervasive chill to the stagnant air. Not that Chun Wei needed to breathe any longer. She unfolded from the lotus position she’d...
death
Mel relishes running the “Enchanted Jungle,” a roadside attraction in the Everglades filled with live parrots, concrete dinosaurs, and other unexpected wonders.
death-of-a-loved-one
"The Starsinger, the Starsinger, the Starsinger, he sings. His histories have long been recorded—in every pit stop he has visited. In every station he has stayed. It may be just a minute of the traffickers slapping the Bini out of his mouth, or them...
child-abuseslaverysuicide
"Itsy bitsy,” whispers the girl in the glass tank beside mine. Not a girl anymore, not really, but it’s better for my sanity to pretend she’s still human. That we both are. We had names once—and skin, soft to the touch. In the sterile, blinding white...
body-horrorgoreviolence
Author : Ruth Joffre Narrator : Julia Rios Host : Matt Dovey Audio Producer : Dean Kidd Discuss on Forums PodCastle 916: Woodpecker, Warbler, Mussel, Thrush is a PodCastle original. Rated G Woodpecker, Warbler, Mussel, Thrush by Ruth Joffre Yesterday, I...
A child who falls through the cracks in a world run by machines and politics, might be the savior of all humanity…
substance-usewar
Damon’s UBI royalties just crashed. His social capital went up in smoke. His girlfriend left him. Now he finds out he’s going to die. What to do? Solve his own murder, for starters…and maybe, just maybe, strike it rich along the way.
deathsubstance-useviolence
"El detonated the EMP against the feeder’s sensor, a delicate organ that he had only seen in fragments, suspended in cytology slides the shape of dominoes. The lab just days ago had been inundated with new specimens, washed up on the long white beaches...
body-horrordeathself-harm
"What lies beyond the Sea of Beasts is known to few, for few are foolish enough to try and cross it. This is not because of the beasts, which all died so long ago their bones have turned to stone, but because it is ghastly. Most of the fish are spiny and...
deathsexual-contentviolence
"Hi Lisle. Hope you’ve had some coffee. The topside comms array is still glitching, and engineering hasn’t lifted a finger to run diagnostics. They say the work order has to come from your end. Shouldn’t take long once they get it. Happy simulated morning to you!"
"Ambassador Shǐ Guì Sūn Yán and Prime Minister Xiang Hu Li Yáng floated in the crystalline water tank at one side of the courtroom. Beyond the anchoring shelves for the judges, the bulbous organic diamond window looked out onto a swollen, orange, solar...
"We called it the monster because we could, though none of us found the label to be particularly satisfying. After a certain point, Yerim started calling it the Logos Pilgrim. Which was understandable, seeing as how she was the most mystically inclined...
"The Henrietta, passenger, cargo, and slave ship, was routinely used to transport goods from the Florida Keys up as far north as Rhode Island, and is also said to have made at least six voyages transporting enslaved African peoples from the Gold Coast of...
racismslavery
"1. To kill a language, you must first rip it from living throats. Don't look so askance; you knew it already. The dead can't speak unless called and the only way to prevent our enemies calling upon their own hordes of dead ancestors is to strip their...
sexual-violenceviolence
"Hey cuz! It’s been too long. Love to come out and see your digs. The message hung in the air, glimmering in her Heads Up Display overlaid across the moss garden she was tending. The chill that swept over Euryale made the hair on her arms stand on end and...
deathsexual-violence
"Good stone, like water, wrought truce by necessity. Here, the river became a waterfall and ate the earth like honeycomb. Here, teardrops of flint washed up at a stone knapper’s feet. Bands of every people in the vastness of the world came for the stone....
animal-harmgoreviolence
"I was no friend to the god of high places, of peaks and spires and rope bridges over narrow canyons, and I had no reason to expect that he was a friend of mine. But my mother kept asking, what could it hurt to ask for his favor. What could it hurt to try....
"Kharatet moistens his sightless eyes with his tongue as he draws his finger across the limestone tablet glyphs. His audience today is a clutch of toddling nymphs, motionless save for their short tails rippling the shallow water impatiently. It’s a good...
cannibalismdeathgore
"It slips, now—I know it slips. There are men in my parlor, in uniforms, crisp navy, badged. Police. Beyond them Eveline wavers in a yellow nightgown, hands clasped to her chest, eyes wide and worried—no, no, she doesn’t, she’s not here, I’m dreaming her,...
deathmental-illnesssuicide
"Two hours out of deadsleep is too soon to be staring at the butchered corpse of a dead god. Neel looks down as the kalipeeli begins its descent to Chowpatty Beach and feels his stomach flip."
body-horrordeathgore
"A woman drags a white doe out of the ice room; it hangs from the ceiling rails by two brass hooks, one caught beneath its pelvis and the other behind the scapulae. As she pulls, the metal wheels whine. When she works in her lab, she is a butcher. She lays...
abusebody-horrorgore
"I spent my first summer as an orphan watching cicadas fuck, scream, and molt. Wasn’t long before I plucked one of the cicada skins from the dry village soil. I brushed it clean against my secondhand clothes I was already beginning to outgrow. Dappled by...
body-horrorgoresexual-content
"Good morning, Akasma.” I say these words to my spaceship every day, whether it is a good morning or not, because she is the only being I can safely talk to, and she has said she likes my voice, froggy and raspy though it may be. My spaceship is not, for...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
In celebration of the 50th World Fantasy Convention’s Toastmaster, Michael Swanwick, Reactor presents a new Mongolian Wizard story about a battle to save Paris from an unexpected new enemy.
goreviolencewar
"Driver, gharivala, beta, bhai-jaan, baba. All the words used to address me; so rarely do I remember being addressed by my name. Not to complain. I don’t think people ever meant to be disrespectful. But having someone to respectfully, lovingly,...
"Elodie finds a pair of old opera glasses in the empty husk of an abandoned silo. The gleam of the metal catches her flashlight beam and throws it back, and Elodie squats and fishes out the glasses with tentative fingers. The silo is huge and dark around...
"She’s walking by the river on an overcast day, when sweat runs down her palms, goosebumps all over her neck. The breeze stills. The gray sky turns blood red. Instead of the Sun, through a clearing in the clouds, she finds the Eye. Veins branch across a...
body-horrorsubstance-usewar
"Joy catches my eye, shuffles my direction. Her face lights the dining room. Her curly gray hair is the sun’s corona, and she seems to float above her walker, needless of her stiff little legs. In seeming slow motion she arrives at the seat across from me....
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"You’re not meant to fix what happens in the time loops. Doctor’s orders, and that comes even before they give you the survey and the spiel and the confidentiality speech. The psych fiddles with his tablet in his cozy, yellow-couch office, and talks to you...
death-of-a-loved-onesuicide
"Finneus Lark finds the man nestled inside of the abdominal cavity of a doe, his skin so pale that his veins are like spiderwebs. Slick with visceral fluid, leaves and petals cling to the man’s bird-boned wrists. His face, haloed by damp curls and crowned...
"The man in the navy Cosmo Corp suit calls it Self-Reconciliation Therapy, this place they’ve dumped you, where the walls are made of mirrors. But they aren’t mirrors, are they? Sure, you raise a hand, and the woman in the not-mirror waves. God, her...
child-abuseself-harmsexual-content
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
body-horror
"Even though the armistice has held for nearly a year now, I know it could shatter at any moment, trapping me here behind enemy lines. The war raged for nearly fifty years—the simple inertia of violence dictates a renewal of hostilities sooner or later....
violencewar
"Deep in the abyss of the Unholy Bazaar, in a shop that reeked of death and god-blood, Sparrow lay screaming in a web of rope and unbreakable silk. Around her, the Aunties bustled: sawing and rinsing and hammering; cursing, grunting, and muttering; welding...
body-horrorgoreviolence
"Q: What (or who!) is Eudaimon? A: We are a nonprofit organization that empowers people to live their best lives. A “life,” in our view, is best defined simply as a contiguous sequence of experiences, and thus the best life is the one consisting of the...
death-of-a-loved-one
"The sketch showed a young woman, her face a perfect oval, holding our base in her cupped hands. Behind her head, Saturn hung golden within its halo of rings. That was the first sign that religion had come with us to Enceladus. I had risen early in the...
death
"The low rumble of the train cut through the night and the living flesh of The City, carrying its passengers ever further from the gleam of parliaments and providence. The stop towards Wild Park grew ever closer, represented along the wall of the train by...
body-horrorgoreviolence
"When Ariana sent word to her birth mother, Scarlett, that they needed to speak, she didn’t really expect a response. Scarlett had abandoned her with her father as a barely weaned infant and only returned when Ariana was twenty. In the few years since,...
violence
"The number one thing to remember about matchmaking on Station 9 is to keep your hyper-synesthesia under control. When the client sitting across from you huffs and purses her lips, and trails of gray and beige puffs follow her every move, under no...
"The world-organism is awake and has spent the last decade playing round after round of tic-tac-toe with itself. Hearing this the first time, Anais reacts like anyone would to a stranger sitting next to them on a plane, insisting on conversation for the...
mental-illnesssubstance-use
"Crunches and shrieks buffeted the Magellan LLC smartship as it plunged into Enceladus’s kilometers-thick ice crust, making their way to the subsurface ocean and the rival LuxeSpace corporation’s station situated there. Warning signals flashed through...
war
"When I was young, I used to fray apart my mother’s tales, seeking the threads of their structure. They were journeys, always, and marked by transition-places: doorway, gate, river. On the other side, someone offered the rules of this new environment. I...
violence
"Wait, stop. Pause. Don’t move. Please. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Just…don’t touch anything. The remote, your phone, your always-listening voice-activated digital assistant designed to make modern life a breeze. Accept my cookies. Agree to...
"You are an exile.” “Yes. And no.” Confined in the narrow neck of the vase, Asmidiske’s voice was tiny and metallic. “An oracle is ambiguous.” They considered and rejected terminology: galaxy, light speed, time warp, circumpolar orbit. “There are not words...
"Iris is deep in an empty ocean, gray-green twilight fading to black everywhere she looks—and she can breathe. She’s a thousand feet above the ground, climbing a fractal cliff suffused with flickering veins of electricity—and she cannot. Iris is flat on...
death-of-a-loved-oneillness-and-pandemic
"Terse heard the disturbance in the woods long before the short, sturdy girl shoved through the overgrown hedge. He flung open the door of his workshop, and she startled, nearly dropping a large knapsack dangling off of one shoulder. “Can I help you?”...
violence
"My sister Angélique found me on a warm spring night. She was not looking for me but for a doctor who could treat women ridden by hags. (Such creatures were properly called soucouyants, but the printers took such liberties with the spelling in my weekly...
body-horrordeath
"Before the cave-in, I’m boiling water over a little fuel stove. It bubbles in the light of my helmet’s headlamp and the low beams of the haul truck. It’s stinking hot but I’m smiling in the pitch black. I’m imagining how my girls are gonna squeal and cry...
death
"When the Fae stole my wife, I followed them into the dark woods to win her back. Jess dropped breadcrumbs along the trail, except she had no bread, so she dropped other things instead. Not far from the house, I found a blue sweater, embroidered with gold...
"You knew from the beginning. You knew because the world knew about the intricate and fascinating life-cycle of the Svarrs, and it had been documented and discussed everywhere throughout the media endlessly. And you knew because Vo made sure you...
"I knew a woman once who lived in Palmary on the Sunwash Sea. Or did I ever really know her? You see, in the time I spent with her, I came to question what I thought I knew about women and everything else—and that’s a strange thing for a man who’s...
suicide
"Hello, there. If you are reading this, then I assume you are either a mortal who somehow stumbled upon this text or a young demigod seeking to ascend closer to Eledumare’s throne. If you are the latter, I welcome you. Soon you shall sit with me and the...
death
"Because Waigong ran out of money due to the rice shortage, he gambled away my mother, an eighteen-year-old girl known for her beauty and dance prowess. She danced like a majestic water dragon, elegant and unstoppable while flowing through the atmosphere,...
misogyny
"The young rag-smasher halts on a terrace. He chases his breath, gazing down on the waterfront. Even from this distance, the bustle lends him an odd calm. Brisk trade means things are running. No one’s starving, not even beggars. Down there, people...
violence
"It forced itself to take that last step onto the ferry. Every step further from land felt like falling. Through space, through time, through every place it had ever been. It kept its eyes open, its features arranged in what it hoped was a neutral...
deathviolence
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
racism
"Almost everyone has, at some point in their lives, encountered a door that was not there before. A little girl sits up in bed, staring at the two identical closets in her bedroom. She feels certain there had been only one when she fell asleep. A salaryman...
cannibalismviolence
"Folks later claimed she was acting strange from the moment she boarded the plane. They described her as skittish, curt, radiating an aura of danger. Some, when confronted with the security footage, which showed her to have behaved rather unremarkably up...
child-deathgoreviolence
"Examination rooms are safe. They stay what they are. The memories they drag to the surface make sense. You assume it’s because you’ve been in so many hospital rooms that your brain is packed with too much realism to have space for the random connections...
death-of-a-loved-one
"There’s reasons not to go sit by the banks of the Dequindre. The mosquitoes bite something fierce this time of year, for one. May through September the air is thick with them. The river swells wide on its way through Wyandott."
"My sister Sera was twelve standard years old when our parents confined her to our family habitat. They kept her there for over a year, and then they died far from home (expedition, landslide). I’ll never know if they were seeking a cure for Sera, or a way...
death-of-a-loved-one
"The soldiers slit the woman’s throat every evening before bedding down so they can sleep without worry. She mocks them but never fights the knife coming to her. Two of the men still take turns watching her in case she heals before the rest of the cadre...
body-horrorgoreviolence
"I realized I was in love with Ivor the day he went up the mountain to speak with the goddess. We were at that age when the affectionate ease of childhood tips over into something different, when every touch could be the casual brush of friendship or...
death
"Azahn had been the ninety-third Imperial Foresight to the Dynasty of Silken Flame for only three weeks when he was forcibly retired. His body had been blessed by the holy waters of the Sky-Vein River, and he had earned the named-blade Stalwart Thy Mind,...
death-of-a-loved-one
"Somewhere between the black slopes and the longest stretch of the cratered plains, I came across a traveler who I thought might be leaving the city and headed for the nested forests. I greeted him from a distance, just as the road curved around a copse of...
"Your deathless heart spasms. Once. Twice. You suck in a long, rattling gasp, and twist over the decanting table, great hacking coughs. Someone thumps your back. “Welcome back, boyo,” Media & Talent Production Coordinator Kayn says. “They got some great...
death
A Russian émigré poet living in Paris is visited by a mysterious bear with an agenda…
Prosperity City’s corrupt mayor never guessed his greatest opponent would be a fire-breathing dragon and her unconventional platform…
violence
"I am waiting for Helen on her fiftieth birthday. On the table, there’s a crystal drinking glass and a vase with rare orchids; I can’t tell if the flowers are genuine or not. Faint piano notes and a cold scent drift in the air. Beautiful men and women sit...
"and in a strip mall parking lot off a side road in some Baltimore suburb my hand is trembling as I take the last of the voidwater in its little bootleg dropper and I peel my eyelid back and though I am so careful and try so hard a bit of the precious...
self-harmsubstance-usesuicide
"When my lover gets the Burning, I prepare to go to the Binding Place, where the mountain meets the sea. Even in her delirium, she smells the offering meal cooking and sees my half-full pack. She begs me not to go. It’s a journey lovers and pilgrims...
"Latent summer stirred while spring lay dormant. April had come to the Kingdom of S’ong and brought with it spells of rain. Tadpoles in the pond recently developed hind legs; above, a stray shower had been drumming at the water pit-a-pat. The rain-rinsed...
deathwar
"Hi, we were both in Central Square on Friday, around 9:30 PM. I’m a tall trans lady with brown hair and glasses. You were standing in front of Sonia with some people. You were looking at your phone and then you looked up at me. Our eyes met for—I’m sorry,...
"Nobody noticed the first few. They walked. One by one, in the beginning. Isolated instances. On every continent, mid-meal, mid-shower, mid-work, mid-fuck, right out the door of a pulled-up car in the middle of a freeway—ordinary people turned their backs...
death-of-a-loved-one
"It’s a few minutes before seven on a cold October evening and I’m just reaching into the bottom drawer of my desk for the Old Monk and my well-thumbed copy of The Big Sleep when I hear footsteps hurrying up the stairs. A new case, has to be. I sigh, give...
"Downwind from the encampment, the wind stank of refuse. The stench of people weeks into an unwashed trek intensified as Yue Ling limped out of the tree line, raising her hands over her head as she slowly approached the sentries. Both were young, younger...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
Chelle’s friend, Wenqian, has everything Chelle doesn’t. A slim figure, pale skin, and most notably the affection of her longtime friend Preston. Like the ocean waves she calls home, Chelle feels transparent and overflowing all at once. So when she’s given...
body-horror
"You remember when those rappers robbed a bank and killed a cop, that summer the girls from Wing turned green? I didn’t think it was connected then—the robbery, the gold, and the hordes of teens who were rotting from the inside. But I know better now."
body-horrordeathviolence
"I have heard the humans say that sex is the most intimate act of which they are capable, and though I did not say so to their faces, I felt great sorrow for them. Demendrenna’s tail twines twice around my torso, above and below the point where my scales...
death-of-a-loved-one
"I banked into a climbing clockwise turn, my wing’s fabric snapping, my jet’s exhaust hot on my backside. A beautiful panorama of Shuwash Island spread out below me, black beaches and orange jungles rising from a white fringe of surf to the gray and...
deathsuicide
"The multiverse broke last week. Broke is perhaps the wrong word. More accurate would be performed a state-change or found new equilibrium, but tell that to Catalina Chang, who has been popping aspirin like M&Ms ever since last Thursday, 5:54 PM, when the...
PseudoPod 807: The Bleak Communion of Abandoned Things is a PseudoPod original. I accept the house in lieu of a settlement. I don’t want Ashley’s dirty money. The house is the least ill-gotten thing she owns, an isolated property she won in a card game and...
abusedeathmental-illness
"The Exhibit of You is the central attraction of an institution you could call a museum, in a population center you could call a city, beloved by creatures who you could call people. We know that this is annoying sentence structure. If you cannot penetrate...
deathsuicide
A reporter travels to the Norwegian Arctic to cover an unusual sled race with the undead leading the living into unknown territory.
deathviolence
The Hero journeys across the desert to capture The Thief Of Memory and retrieve her stolen memories. What she finds in the end may destroy her.
death-of-a-loved-oneviolence
"The first of Irene’s memories I eat is the night she learned I had been murdered. It was karaoke night—not the official one for the cruise ship passengers, but an illicit one Irene organized for a few of the other crew. They weren’t supposed to be in the...
body-horrordeathdeath-of-a-loved-one
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
death
"There are nights when she twists like a tree in the breeze. Hair falling wildly in brown curls around her shoulders, she dances in the dark kitchen, dress twirling as she spins. On those nights she giggles, and asks me to play her favorite music, and...
"You are the unalive thing possessing her body. Her body was printed three days ago from blueprints transferred moments before the motorbike crash over the bridge. Her flesh and fat and keratin and bone are accurate to prior specifications, except for the...
Eli is—one hundred percent, without a doubt—vampiro, but he's missing all the stereotypical traits. Is there room for him to exist in a world where everyone has already decided who and what he is? Copyright khōréō magazine 2021. Story by K. Victoria...
child-abuseracismviolence
The year is 1915, and a young man hired to shout the words on title cards for silent films experiences the magic of movies. This spurs him to edit some of the worst dialog, leading him in a weird direction that utterly changes his life.
"It was 10 a.m., and Anmar clapped his hands to silence the screeching wake-up alarm he had set for himself. He didn’t actually need the alarm, since he had already been awake for twelve minutes before it went off, but Anmar enjoyed using technology...
Not reviewed by Rocket Stack Rank.
"They say Omma’s in there, but she’s not, she’s not. It’s just an empty metal capsule they’re lowering into the ground, and the rain is too wet and the flowers too bright and the wailing of the mourners—it’s so much, too much, and Na-Yeong slaps Appa’s...
deathdeath-of-a-loved-oneself-harm
Graff’s official role is muscle for the Visigoth – but his personal mission is internally cataloguing all of his experiences to relay to the other beings from his home planet when they cross paths. His professional life rarely clashes with his identity,...
deathviolence
"I have experienced some tastes of my afterlife as a crustacean. In it, I am one of many, on a beach with purple sand abutting a sea that could be water but might be some other liquid entirely, beneath stars that seem larger and brighter than any I see in...
deathsuicide
"She was different. She was distinguished by the oracles. She spoke to the gods, who descended on her in disorienting, frightening fits that made her vision blank out and caused her to fall down. As God’s Wife of Amun she had been closer to the gods than...
"Pick me up, girl. I’m such a pretty, delicate thing, hidden behind the gondola’s cushion. You feel me before you see me: the soft velvet of the cushions suddenly replaced by the roughness of my lace and the cool touch of my silk. Your fingers are smooth...
"You never expect to meet one of the refugees. You aren’t a scientist or a politician, you’re a middle school history teacher. The story of the refugees from a destroyed parallel Earth... should fade into the background of your life like every other major...
death
"Stars snap into place outside Lura’s cockpit. A red giant twenty degrees off her ship’s nose has visibly shifted position. The nebula above her has grown more diffuse. She exhales, clicks the button to log another successful breach, and lets herself blink...
death
"Marlowe is going to outlive him. Of this, he is sure. He has seen him on the streets of Blackfriars, of Southwark, in Bladder Lane, near Aldgate… He can pretend to be anything, young Kit. Not so young Kit. The two men are of an age: born the same year...